Unnamed industry moles say Amazon will have a tablet out in the second half of the year - cheaper Kindles too - and that Asus will release a slate based on Nvidia's upcoming quad-core Tegra chip.
Said sources were all cited by Taiwanese news site DigiTimes this week.
Assuming Nvidia's four-core 'Kal El' system-on-a-chip - …

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An E-Book Reader a Tablet Does Not Make

Well...the Kindle is an e-book reader. So it reads e-books.

I'll be damned if it can play 1080p HD content though...hence the new tablet thingy. Pretty straight forward really...

I'll be holding off buying a Satan Slab until there's more detail on this. The potential for an e-ink / hd cabable hybrid panel is just too good an option I reckon. If they pull it off it could lay waste to the competition espeically if they sell it as a loss leader. Which is good for us consumers...even if we sell our souls to Amazon.

e-ink pad?

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs:

"Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of tablets in this country. The Apple Ipad was the tablet to own. Then the other guy came out with a two core tablet. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Ipad 2. That's two cores and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards went to four cores. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling two cores and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five cores."

Cores

The IPad2 actually has 3 cores if you look at it from nVidia's viewpoint. The new Tegra chip has a dual-core ARM cpu and a dual-core GPU, all in the same SoC. The iPad2 has a dual-core ARM chip and a separate single-core GPU (albeit baked into the SoC I believe). Contrast that with the current desktop GPUs which are highly-parallel single-core CPUs. The move to dual-core likely gives it an entire core of extra Ooomph it can whip out when you load up a 3D game, but it can shut entirely off when it simply needs to handle your eBook reader interface. Power savings without (much) GPU performance sacrifice. Sounds good to me.

Kind of obvious

Amazon's Android app store makes zero sense in any other context than their own tablet device. I doubt even 1 in 500 people would bother installing Amazon's app store unless it came preinstalled on their device, which implies Amazon are making a device. It's also clear from B&N selling 3 million Nook Colour devices that there are rich pickings to be had.

The big question for me is what version of Android this device will run and how open it will be. Will it be a fork of 2.x or running 3.x?

I strongly believe that all the shenanigans from Google about not releasing the Android 3.0 source code happened precisely because of Amazon. By withholding the source they're probably hoping to moderate Amazon's stance or risk running a fork and not benefit from the changes in Android 3.0. Maybe Amazon will ditch their app store for Google Marketplace or come to some other arrangement. If no arrangement is made I can see an interesting battle taking place.

As an Android developer I would be interested in writing apps for the any Kindle tablet but Amazon aren't exactly making the prospect look sweet at the moment by charging a $100 annual developer fee for the privilege. Maybe if they're looking at a war they should be getting the devs on their side first.

oh look

Perhaps this explains why the DX has been left to languish...

This all might explain why the Kindle DX has been left to languish - running the outdated v2 software and getting no real attention, and still no international release, whilst the Kindle 3 gets fairly regular updates.

Amazon are being too slow here; It will be disappointing if they just release another me-too cheap Android tablet with a standard LCD panel - e-ink is still the clearest screen technology for reading books by far.

I reckon there's still a healthy market for a DX-sized reader, providing it's priced properly.

I wonder...

Proposed Kindle changes undesirable

If the new Kindle screen is literally like the Sony ones then it'll be a step backwards because the Sony screens have a noticeably lower contrast, which people tend to attribute to the way the touch stuff is bonded on top. If it's a tablet-style form factor with no buttons whatsoever then it'll be a step backward in usability since you'll no longer be able to hold it in one hand and turn pages, e.g. while using the other hand to grip some part of the tube/bus/train that you're commuting on but which has no free seats.

On the concept of a separate tablet, I see Amazon not just as the only company with a serious chance to challenge Apple at their own integrated market game, but quite possibly the only company that could displace Apple and become the dominant single player — by simultaneously having a ready-made broad retail audience, a strong content offering and, if Android based, being able to get the bloggers on board from day one.

Actually...

its was just the old sony ereaders that had the coating (i have one) and yeah its not great. the new ones however dont have this and are exactly as good as the kindle ones but with touch (yeah i have both)

in comparison the kindle is a pile of cack to use compared with the sony,

Probably because...

Barnes & Noble operate in the US only, whereas Amazon operate internationally and (finally) launched the Kindle outside of the US last year. So, while it was an oversight not to mention the Nook, it was probably understandable from an article written in a territory where the thing isn't available.